The Gender of Freedom: Fictions of Liberalism and the Literary Public SphereIn a sweeping reassessment of early American literature, The Gender of Freedom explores the workings of the literary public sphere from its colonial emergence through the antebellum flourishing of sentimentalism. Placing representations of and by women at the center rather than the margin of the public sphere, this book links modern forms of political identity to the seemingly private images of gender displayed prominently in the developing public